Assignment 3: Part 1

Short bio of Bill Bryson. He was born in Des Moines, Iowa, on December 8, 1951. He is a best-selling American author of humorous books on travel, as well as books on the English language and science. He lived in North Yorkshire for most of his career until moving back to the U.S. in 1995. He moved back to Britain in 2003 where he currently still resides.

It seems Bryson's project wouldn't fit our acedmic model (well at least it doesn't seem that way to me) because he uses his information as more of a story then research writing. He does explain a great detail of information but the way he reveals it wouldn't be something us students would be taught to write our papers on. It does represent inquiry because he lists questions within questions and then answers them. For example, in the Introduction, he asks himself this question, "Sitting at the kitchen table one afternoon, playing idly with the salt and pepper shakers, it occurred to me that I had absolutely no idea why, out of all the species in the world, we have such an abiding attachment to those two. Why not pepper and cardamom, say, or salt and cinnamon" (p4). He doesn't answer his question in this specific citing but this is still inquiry at its finest because he allows us to think on this issue and in some ways, that makes it even better than him answering it because it gives the reader openness and gains their attention by making them think on that specific issue. The only question I have on this writing is I had a hard time reading it because my printer cut off half of the left side section every time I printed it off. I'm not a "dumb" guy but I couldn't figure out how to make it print without cutting anything off so I had to guess on certain sentences and words so I'm hoping I guessed right.